Reptilia · Squamata
Mediodactylus orientalisStepánek, 1937
Mediterranean Thin-toed gecko
Photograph by BJ Smit, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
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A tree-dwelling, active by day or night, meat-eating gecko from the Saharo-Sindian region, reaching 48 mm snout to vent.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Mediodactylus
- Grows to
- 48mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 6years
Longer than only 33% of all geckos anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 23 to 220 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
32 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 6years
- Body temp in the wild · mean, when active
- 29.4°C
Amitai and Bouskila 2001, Werner et al. 1993 (1-4 years but one adult caught female lived for 6 years in captivity: but no other gecko lived >4; n = 74), TAUM museum records: 4.8, Werner 2016 (max 6 years in captivity, see also Bar et al. 2021)
body temperature of active animals in nature
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 48mm2 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 40.3mm1.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 19mm0.7 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 2.51g0.09 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 1.49g0.05 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished, 4.5 g (the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History)
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Biome
- Mediterranean
- Active season · months of the year
- 12months
- Region
- Saharo-Sindian
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Elevation · above sea level
- 30–900m
- Range size
- 205,704km²
arthropods (Werner 2016, Bar et al. 2021)
basks, diurnal in winter, nocturnal in summer, cathemeral in spring and autumn (Werner 1993), cathemeral (Frankenberg 1978), mostly nocturnal, we observed it active at night in the Galilee, (pers. obs.), nocturnal but also active by day (Werner 2016), mostly nocturnal, also basks and a bit active during daytime (Bar et al. 2021)
e.g., pers. obs., Bar et al. 2021, Werner 1993, Schwarz et al. 2016
35-900 (pers. obs.)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 1.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–2eggs
- Clutches a year
- 2–5per year
- First breeds at
- 10–11months
one clutch of two from Israel (Goldberg 2012), 1-2 (Werner 2016, Bar et al. 2021),
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Stepánek
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1937
- Type locality
- Israel
Keeping one
7.5 in × 4.75 in × 7.5 in(19 × 12 × 19 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 2 in (48 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Mediterranean Thin-toed gecko. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
0kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 3 g, the heaviest recorded for Mediterranean Thin-toed gecko — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches in a year
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Conservation status
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Habitat
- — Active in
Others in Gekkonidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Mediodactylus orientalis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mediodactylus-orientalis
@misc{mediodactylus_orientalis_2026,
title = {Mediodactylus orientalis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mediodactylus-orientalis}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.